Dinner turns into an ordeal

Barely two hours after landing in the city, 24-year-old Australian (who did not wish to be named) and her boyfriend found themselves at the receiving end of firing at Café Leopold. “We had heard that the café was a good place to hangout for foreign tourists and so we decided to go there,” she said. Obviously, the terrorists who were targeting foreigners had had the same thought.

“We had ordered dinner and I was sitting on a chair facing the street. When the firing started, I dropped to the floor, however, I got shot,” she said. “My boyfriend had managed to sneak out, but when he realised I was still inside, he came back and dragged me out,” she added.  The couple on their first visit to the city were planning to see Mumbai, Delhi and Rajasthan.


Malad-resident Jai Prakash Prabhor, 47, along with wife Manju, 42, and son Pradeep, 23, was at Platform No 8, CST, when he heard gunshots. “We were going to travel by the Chennai Mail, and decided to board it from CST, from where the train starts its journey, in order to avoid hassles,” said Prabhor. The family was on its way to Tirupati.
“We didn’t know what was happening. I ran to the station master’s cabin,” said Prabhor, who started running with his family in the direction of CST subway.  “It was probably God’s grace that the bullet struck my luggage and not me,” he said. Nevertheless, so strong was the impact of the bullet that it still managed to pass through Prabhor’s luggage and injure his leg landing him at Bombay Hospital. 

— They spoke to Deepa Suryanarayan